When Prevention Is Too Late, Fund Helps

The man was dying of AIDS. With only a few months left in a brief, tragic life, he had an idea. His was a notion borne of rage.

He failed to understand why the AIDS Assistance Fund of San Diego County had so much trouble raising money.

“Why don’t we put up cots on the Community Concourse in downtown San Diego,” he said, “and then put up a sign saying, ‘Pay $5 to watch an AIDS victim die?’ ”

Janis Baske, 52, is an administrative assistant with the AIDS Assistance Fund. She remembers the man’s cry for help. She understood the sarcasm and the rage.

She didn’t think the notion was all that bad.

“He meant to say: ‘Why isn’t there a hospice group for AIDS patients? Why no nursing home? Why are so few people paying attention to the victims of AIDS rather than focusing all their energy on education and prevention? What about those who are dying? Does anyone care?”

Prevention, Education

Baske’s group, which has been in operation for four years, is not the same as the San Diego AIDS Project. The project is devoted to prevention and education and gets some funding from both the city and county. The assistance fund receives nary a penny from the state, local or federal government. Almost all its funding is from private donations, most of them minuscule--”pocket change,” as one volunteer put it.

The assistance fund is not in competition with AIDS Project; its focus is completely different. It deals specifically with AIDS patients and basic needs--food, clothing, shelter, even money.

In the midst of a meeting on Wednesday, a volunteer stepped in to ask Baske a question. He said an AIDS patient suffering from skin cancer--thus wearing the scars of his pain on his face--was in danger of being evicted. His landlord had turned hostile. Evictions and discrimination are nothing new to Baske; she deals with them every day.

“When a victim is first diagnosed, they are often kicked out of their living space,” she said. “That’s the reason for our emergency housing. They are often rejected by family, friends or lovers.”

When a patient goes to Baske, he or she usually receives $700 for first month’s rent, plus deposit. The patient also receives food from the in-house food bank and necessary clothing.

But none of this comes free. And, because the increases in AIDS patients are so dramatic, Baske’s organization is constantly courting money. Last year, the assistance fund spent almost $250,000. Baske said expenditures through 1989 may total $1 million.

To address the growing fiscal crisis, an assistance fund benefit is planned June 12. It will feature primarily an art auction and fashion show, but it is only a stopgap. Baske worries about the future of the fund.

The fund now serves 287 clients, 11 of whom are women. Baske calls this a caseload increase of 400% over last year. She sees an increasing number of intravenous drug users, heterosexuals and bisexuals.

Regardless of how they got the disease, AIDS patients report similar sentiments. They feel lonely and alienated, Baske said, as though the pain they wear like a scarlet A has reduced them to lepers. Prevention and education do nothing for them, she said; they have the disease.

Son Is Gay

Baske has seen many patients, some of them friends, die of AIDS. She became involved with the fund because her son is gay. He does not have AIDS. (He has been tested, and the results were negative.) She had another son, not an AIDS victim, who died of cancer. She understands pain and the need for comfort when death is at hand.

From her office in the back of the Metropolitan Community Church in North Park, a church with a predominantly gay congregation, she wonders about the city’s refusal to finance the assistance fund.

“They say they have too many homeless people to worry about,” she said. “That they need the funding. The irony is, many AIDS patients tossed from their homes become homeless. Do they have to become homeless to get a helping hand?”